San Francisco News

ILM artists Ian Milham and Shannon Thomas take us behind the scenes of a breakthrough virtual production shoot in the first of a two-part story about the 2024 Summer Olympics and 2026 Winter Olympics.

By Lucas O. Seastrom

American viewers of the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics on NBC and Peacock have experienced a number of striking visual effects created by Industrial Light & Magic, whether they realize it or not.

Dynamic, promotional footage of American athletes in snowy Italian landscapes and on the ground in Milan are in fact all shot in front of an ILM StageCraft virtual production volume. The achievement is part of a continuing story of ILM’s work to broaden the applicability of its virtual production toolset. These latest Olympic games are in fact the second to be showcased in such a way. ILM also partnered with NBC for the earlier 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, an undertaking that won multiple Emmy Awards.

Paris: The Brief

The story of ILM and NBC’s collaboration for the Olympics actually begins in 2021 with a distinctly American sport: football. “As people were hearing about our virtual production work on The Mandalorian, we talked with lots of different groups and did some work with them, including with NBC Sports for Sunday Night Football,” recalls ILM virtual production supervisor Ian Milham.

With the need to capture singer Carrie Underwood performing in multiple environments and in quick succession, ILM deployed a version of its StageCraft volume, which provided greater flexibility than a traditional blue screen. It proved a meaningful exercise in developing a different kind of story for a client with different needs than a feature filmmaker. “The following year, NBC was exploring ways to level up their work,” Milham explains, “and they reached out and asked if these tools could be put to further use.”

What NBC proposed for the Summer Olympics in Paris was far more ambitious than the Sunday Night Football production. Dozens of athletes – from swimmers to gymnasts to javelin throwers – would be captured in multiple Paris locales at twilight: a street, a riverside, a rooftop, a fashion show-eqsue runway at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, and a virtual trip down the Seine River during the event’s opening ceremonies. The resulting footage would be adapted into short form clips used for promotional spots before and during the Games.

“NBC’s goal was to get a lot of footage in different contexts of all these athletes looking amazing in a world that is aesthetically heightened,” says Milham. “Along with that, the DP/director [Scott Duncan] wanted to continuously run the camera in order to keep things improvisational with the athletes. You have to shoot all the time and capture lots of different things. It’s not like a feature where you’re going to board and previs everything in advance. That was our biggest challenge to deliver on. The director wanted no rules in terms of flexibility with shooting and NBC wanted a large amount of usable footage.”

A Different Kind of Volume

The Summer Olympics production was the debut of a new variation of ILM StageCraft. “We had invented this really cool thing that people wanted to use, but Star Wars was always using it,” says Milham. “So we needed to make another version that wasn’t limited to one place. It would be a huge advantage to bring StageCraft to the client. So we created a mobile system, which was deployed for the first time with the Paris Olympics.”

The volume itself can be adapted to any size, its “tiles” – LED panels – adjusted to the needed shape of a given set. Created by ILM’s virtual production team based in San Francisco, the entire infrastructure is built to move, “like a set-up for a rock concert,” as Milham puts it. For the Paris Olympics, a roughly 180-degree curved wall was constructed to a height of approximately 25 feet. This specific production involved the extensive use of foreground set pieces that needed to blend seamlessly with the virtual background, as did the elaborate practical lighting set-ups.

“StageCraft isn’t just one thing,” Milham adds. “It’s a lot of different tools and techniques. Sometimes we use a little of it or a lot of it, whatever is needed.”

Putting the City of Lights on the Screen

Starting some nine months ahead of the actual shoot in November of 2023 was virtual art department (VAD) supervisor Shannon Thomas and a team of artists responsible for creating the settings visible on the volume’s tiles. A four-year ILM veteran with 20 years across the industry, Thomas brings experience from a number of different effects houses, including Rhythm & Hues and Weta FX.

He “came here for Star Wars,” as he puts it, reflecting on recent projects he contributed to like Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (2024-25) and The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026). “I came here to work on the volume and be involved in real-time virtual production, future-tech projects, and to get back into film work.” But Thomas admits with a smile that he is also a big Olympics fan and was happily surprised to join the team for Paris, it being his favorite city to boot.

NBC’s brief for the City of Lights was different from a usual feature film in that realistic accuracy was not essential. The ILM artists would not be required to match the layout or appearance of a specific location in Paris, but rather capture “the idea of Paris,” as Thomas notes. “That goes all the way down to what kind of chair we need to have in front of a café. If it feels like Paris, then we have it. It allowed us to work faster as well.”

“We’re not going with photo-realism,” Milham adds. “It’s in a style that’s more like a glamorous photo shoot, a larger than life situation.”

The team spent considerable time determining the best digital skies, ultimately landing on the right blend of pinks and blues during magic hour for each set. For the street setting, former senior VAD artist David Flamburis took ownership and, rather than evoke a specific neighborhood, they created a fictitious location full of Parisian charm, and with fantastical views of the Eiffel Tower. The iconic structure itself was also a subject of considerable study, in particular how best to light it. Existing Eiffel Tower assets from earlier ILM productions were useful for reference. Along the Seine River, ILM changed the water’s width and depth as their artistic needs demanded.

Initially developed with commercial real-time software, the environments were then ported to ILM’s proprietary Helios renderer for volume projection. New advancements allowed for enhanced rippling, refraction, and reflection in the river water, which was sometimes augmented on the live action set by practical techniques, including a small tub of water with shards of glass. It was all in service of what the team dubbed “hyper-realism.”

According to Thomas, the opening ceremony load was probably the most challenging to create. “Everyone knew this would involve various boats per each country’s team going down the Seine, which was a very cool idea. The big challenge was the crowds, which is always a tricky thing in real time. We had to figure out the logistics of how many boats, how many people, and those types of things. We had tight resources throughout the project so we had to work very closely together to determine how things needed to be depicted.

“Senior VAD artist Nate Propp came up with a very clever solution for this process here that allowed us to color coordinate the crowds, per country color in sections, as if they were fans per country peppered around the set,” Thomas continues. “The digital crowd also had controls for how much they would cheer, including waving flags, holding signs, etc. For the distance we’d see them from camera and we knew the trick would work.”

ILM created a roughly half-mile stretch of river that was necessarily fictitious in layout. To determine the best speed, Thomas actually contacted a Parisian Bateaux Mouches boat tour company to gather research. “I told them that my parents were planning this trip to Paris, and they wanted to go for a ride on the Seine, but they get really seasick,” he notes with a laugh. “How fast do they go? Is there a lot of motion? And the company wrote me back! About nine to 12 knots was the average speed. Then we could design the movement of the boats that way and it worked really well, as it’s always best to work from reality and adjust from there.”

How to Shoot with Lots of People in Many Places Very Quickly

Compared to a typical day on the StageCraft volume set of The Mandalorian, ILM’s crew for the Summer Olympics had to capture roughly four times the amount of live footage. During a massive production that involved dozens of athletes moving between six different locations on the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood, ILM’s volume stage welcomed 58 individuals over a six-day shoot. Some athletes were only on hand for a matter of minutes, requiring an unprecedented level of flexibility to make quick changes. The ILM crew executed over 120 scene changes on the volume’s wall without any waiting time required.

“The on-set grips were the real heroes with all of those changes,” Milham notes. “They had to move physical sets in and out 120 times. The practical art department worked with us throughout that process.”

The key to ILM’s flexibility was dividing its rendering power into subgroups. Whereas a cinematic-scale production like Star Wars would utilize all of its rendering capacity into one volume load that would be utilized for hours at a time, the rapid pace of the Olympics shoot led the crew to devise a new solution. Three separate renderers, each with its ability to power the entire LED wall, were loaded with distinct settings. When the client requested a scene change, all the ILM team had to do was switch the feed over instantaneously.

“Scott Duncan is an amazing and inspiring person to work, with who films shows like Survivor,” Thomas says about the production’s combined director and cinematographer. “He’d make changes live on the set, and would just pick up the camera and want to shoot something. The stage team would have to keep up. It was a quick, iterative process, very freestyle, like indie filmmaking, which I love. They’d shoot and just keep the camera rolling. Where in a feature film you’re focusing on getting a whole take or a specific scene, in this case they’re looking for just a few seconds of something amazing that they can use to then stitch into their longer marketing narrative.”

Real Time Revisions

Not only could ILM make rapid changes between entire set-ups, but they could even make live alterations with the CG background itself. When the lighting team incorporated the tub of water with shards of glass in the Seine River locale, the stylized, caustic light initially felt jarring, more like a swimming pool. So to help balance the effect, the ILM artists plussed the scene with additional lighting along the riverside.

“We added some bright white lights along the river in the background, just like the lights along the side of a pool,” says Milham. “It helped to fit the swimmer in the scene because you could imagine that one of those lights was right next to her. Do we really care that the Seine doesn’t have those lights? Not in this situation. We’re just trying to make it look awesome. That’s the artifice of it. It’s okay if it looks like a dream.”

Incorporating these details within the Helios environment would have taken a matter of minutes, and all while the scene was still loaded on the volume wall. “The moment is over if it takes hours, so we have to do it right there,” Milham adds. “I’ll be there on the radio calling in the changes and adjustments as the shoot is taking place.”

A Special Guest Introduction

“I had gone up to the stage during the shoot, and everyone seemed really happy with how things were going,” remembers Thomas. “Then our producer, Shivani Jhaveri, just mentioned, ‘Oh, Steven was here yesterday and he loved it.’ I said, ‘Steven?’ and she’s like, ‘Spielberg!’ What?! Laughing, ‘How?’ It was an unexpected surprise to hear he was pleased with the work, what a blessing to have him involved.”

Not long before the shoot was set to begin. NBC arranged for director Steven Spielberg to film a special introduction for the Olympics on ILM’s volume set. The special moment required yet another new way of presenting a scene on the LED wall. Spielberg would walk on from the side, with the blank wall and its surroundings visible behind him, and then as he came to center stage, the Parisian riverside location would load.

“We had just shot The Fabelmans with him, and he understood the process, so I think he trusted that it would work well,” says Milham. “And because this clip involves Steven Spielberg, the ‘filmmaking’ of it all can be part of the story. So Steven began walking outside the volume, as if he were on a movie set, because he was, of course, and then we turned the environment on. It was a relatively unique use of the technology.”

Milham describes the required process as “relatively easy,” an extension of their existing multiload capacity. They simply closed the video feed for the riverside scene to make the wall appear blank, and then turned it on again at the right moment.

Spielberg himself likened the grand show that is the Olympic Games to a great story, something that felt close to home for the ILM team, as Shivani Jhaveri notes. “The theme that Spielberg talks about in his opening is so relevant to StageCraft,” she explains. “There’s a connection in that StageCraft is all about telling a story. It was all about telling the athlete’s stories, where they’ve come from, where they are now, and it was really special to see all that.”

“If something new is needed, we’ll invent it.”

The success of ILM’s work on the Paris Olympics project was thanks to a relatively small team, especially compared to a feature film or episodic series. Along with Milham, Thomas, and Jhaveri, some of the other leading crew members included lead virtual production technical director Rey Reynolds, CG supervisor Sam Wirch, capture supervisor Ted O’Brien, and lead operator Kelly Fan.

“One of the reasons that ILM has been around for 50 years is that we’re not married to the way things are,” says Milham. “If something new is needed, we’ll invent it. If something we’ve been doing forever needs to change, we’ll change it. We will adapt. Even in the short amount of time that this method of shooting has existed, we’ve completely transformed it. One of my favorite things has been working with all sorts of different filmmakers, storytellers, and clients who tell us, ‘That’s great, but it needs to do this…’ or ‘Have you ever thought about trying this?’ And we try it. That happens on every show.”

ILM’s Olympics story continues with the 2026 Winter Games in Milan, Italy. Watch ILM.com for a behind-the-scenes look at this production, which included brand-new innovations.

—

Lucas O. Seastrom is the editor of ILM.com and Skysound.com, as well as a contributing writer and historian for Lucasfilm.

ILM.com is showcasing artwork specially chosen by members of the ILM Art Department. In this installment of a continuing series, three artists from the San Francisco studio share insights about their work on the 2025 mixed reality playset from ILM and Lucasfilm, Star Wars: Beyond Victory.

Art Director Stephen Zavala

Beyond Victory required a hub where our characters would live and roam. That’s how the garage was born as an idea. It served as an HQ where the player could come back after starting and finishing every quest. Like all concept work, one needs to find their footing, and this is done by providing several ideas for a particular story beat or design need. Challenges arise once we see the space in VR, since spaces have a tendency to look smaller or larger than we originally imagined. Once we see the space on a virtual space it’s all about adjusting the space to a scale we’re comfortable with.

The director, Jose Perez III, really wanted a place in the middle of nowhere. I tried to capture that, but it was also important to make sure it didn’t look abandoned. It’s isolated, but lots of activity happens inside the garage as well as the surrounding areas. I always liked the idea that it was a hub where all kinds of visitors would come and go, either to fuel up or repair their speeders, and bringing with them all kinds of cool stories.

I wanted to design a place with a sense that it’s been lived in for quite some time. It wasn’t meant to be in disrepair, but instead have that sense of daily life and how it can be messier than we’d like to admit when it comes to managing our spaces. It certainly was satisfying how the garage slowly grew into that exact idea.

All art pieces come with challenges. When in doubt you reference, step back or subject your designs to peer review. A brief pause often provides time for introspection on how to adjust the course.

Senior Concept Artist Casey Straka

Volo is our main/player character, and there were a few different physical traits they had to have, storywise; mainly, they had to be on the smaller side for podracing prowess, and have four arms for some specific game mechanics they wanted to incorporate. Besides that, it was a very open brief. 

We considered multiple different species for Volo at first, lots of mulling over, lots of options that didn’t feel quite right. I proposed a Nikto, since they are such a varied species in the galaxy and have different subspecies and evolutionary traits depending on where they’re from. Maybe one subspecies evolved an extra pair of arms, which was a trait we needed. We landed there, but I don’t think we stayed there in the end, so I think Volo is something new altogether. I mostly took inspiration from previous Star Wars heroes! I wanted Volo to be very appealing, like you’d want to be their friend after you spend enough time following their story. I did a lot of additional drawings of Volo to find their mannerisms and expressions, the little things that make them, them. 

Volo’s outfit was fun to do, I love a good Star Wars jacket. They also have flexible spines on their head, and how those move according to emotions ended up being inspired by cats; they flatten to their head when scared, flare out when angry, droop a little when sad. 

In a very technical sense, a goal I set for myself was to hit a new benchmark in terms of skill; I learned a lot about my own process on this project. But one goal I always set for myself is to make a character people can get attached to. That’s always the most important part to me. I think all designs have their struggle points, some more than others. If something isn’t budging I try to take a walk. Concept art is a lot of problem solving, and getting distance from it to work something out can help.

Senior Concept Artist Evan Whitefield

The design draws inspiration from components of several different TIE fighters. Both engines are based on the TIE Bomber’s twin ion engine thrusters (ordnance pods), with TIE Interceptor wings mounted on each engine to give the vehicle a more aggressive silhouette. 

The cockpit functions as the control pod and was cut down and reworked to feel more dangerous, almost chariot-like in form. Additional elements, including the energy binder plates, rear thrusters, steel control cables, and air intakes, were carefully integrated to create a seamless fusion of podracer and TIE fighter design language.

This vehicle wasn’t originally planned. It emerged naturally as a concept I thought would be fun to play in-game. Early on, I imagined the original owner as a former Imperial who went rogue and turned to podracing, scavenging parts from Imperial fighters to construct what became known as the TIE Bolt. As the concept evolved, the final story became that the TIE Bolt was a custom podracer created as a gift for Imperial Admiral Rellen by Grakkus Jahibaki Tingi.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory – A Mixed Reality Playset is currently on sale on Meta Quest 3 and 3S headsets.

—

See the complete gallery of concept art and a design case study from Star Wars: Beyond Victory here on ILM.com.

Read more about Star Wars: Beyond Victory:

‘Star Wars: Beyond Victory’ Now Available and Director Jose Perez III Takes Us Behind the Scenes

Bobby Moynihan Takes Us Behind the Scenes of ‘Star Wars: Beyond Victory’

ILM’s innovative approach leads the way for more than 1,700 visual effects shots, helping bring Wright’s dystopian action thriller to life.

By Clayton Sandell

When director Edgar Wright was gearing up to make The Running Man (2025) and considered the extensive visual effects the story would require, he turned to a fellow filmmaker for advice.

“I’m friends with Gareth Edwards, and I was really taken with the work on The Creator,” Wright says in an interview with ILM.com. “Especially the idea of shooting on location and then designing the environments after the fact. I was really impressed by how the visual effects work was put into more naturalistic, grounded camerawork. I wanted to pick his brain about how exactly it was done.”

In The Running Man, a science-fiction thriller set in a near-future dystopian America, blue-collar worker Ben Richards (Glen Powell) desperately needs money to buy medicine for his baby daughter. He signs up with a TV network, hoping to compete on one of their game shows. He is picked for the most dangerous one: where contestants try to evade capture for 30 days in exchange for $1 billion.

After chatting with Edwards, Wright decided The Running Man should utilize the same unconventional approach that ILM brought to The Creator, winner of multiple awards for best visual effects, including from the Visual Effects Society.

Shooting on The Running Man began in early November 2024. With a release date rapidly approaching just a year later, the pressure to meet deadlines was on every department, including visual effects. Wright says he was happy the project reunited him with Academy Award-winning production visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst. The two worked together on Wright’s 2010 film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. “I remembered very fondly working with Andrew, so that was just an amazing, fortuitous bit of kismet,” Wright says.

The filmmaker credits Whitehurst and visual effects producer Sona Pak for preproduction planning, which kept everything on track. “Andrew and Sona were very clear on how to make this work, and how it would even be possible to turn around something this quickly with so many visual effects shots,” Wright recalls. “They had a very clear idea of what we were trying to achieve before we started shooting. What was really good was making decisions early on and sticking to them. I think where things can go awry – especially on a compressed schedule – is if you’re still working out what you want to do after you’ve finished filming.

“I’m frankly really amazed that we managed to do everything we did in time,” Wright adds.

Ben Richards’ 30-day fight to survive begins in Co-Op City, with the journey taking him to New York and Boston. Exterior scenes were shot mostly in real locations in London, England and Glasgow, Scotland, as well as on practical and backlot locations in Sofia, Bulgaria.

“Most of the initial meetings and discussions were centered around the places we were thinking of shooting, and the things we were thinking of building,” Whitehurst explains. “When that started to solidify, it became much clearer who was actually going to do what, and what was physically buildable, and what wasn’t.”

Fans of Andor (2022-25) may notice that the Canary Wharf section of London makes an appearance in The Running Man, disguised by a number of digital enhancements. “We did have nicely filmed places where the majority was real, which is always a great starting point,” says ILM visual effects supervisor Dave Zaretti. “Then you’re extending upwards into the distance. You can change the sky a little bit, but it was based on truth and reality, and nicely chosen locations. The team had a blast.”

Another shot set outside the fictional network headquarters begins at the real entrance steps leading to Wembley Stadium, but then transitions to a completely CG skyscraper as the camera tilts up. “It’s very funny to me to take one of London’s most famous landmarks and digitally erase it from the movie,” Wright laughs. “That’s an example where we’re starting with a real shot of Glen Powell and all the extras walking up the steps, and then the camera just keeps going and going. That was really the methodology throughout. It was about keeping it grounded, because the perspective of the story is that you’re very much seeing it from Ben Richards’s viewpoint.”

Visual effects contributed significant digital building extensions, crowds, street signs, lampposts, traffic lights, and even flying mailboxes. Cars from the 1980s era were digitally augmented with designs that more closely fit the story’s futuristic aesthetic. “James Mohan and Ashley Pay deserve huge credit for taking on the lion’s share of world-building, from city extensions to augmented traffic lights, road markings, and uptown car augmentation,” Zaretti says.

For a rooftop sequence where Richards tries to escape from a Boston hotel, full CG city recreations were combined with live-action footage shot on a partial set against a green screen. Another scene that appears to be a single take is actually three, completed with digital seams. In Boston, Richards runs out of an apartment and down a hallway – dodging gunfire and heroically sliding into an elevator – before reappearing to smash the lens of a pursuing rover camera.

“That was three separate takes that we had to marry together,” says Whitehurst, revealing that Powell appears in the first and last parts of the shot, while a stunt performer completed the floor slide in the middle. “That stuff is pure invisible effects. You need to get them all into position and use CG where you need to. We had a CG digi-double take over between the different poses that weren’t quite matching across the takes. It was a fun shot.

Digital doubles and extensive face replacements were used during chases and a pivotal moment where Richards narrowly escapes an explosive head-on collision, plunging from a bridge into the river below. The film’s finale features a completely CG V-Wing airplane, digital explosions, and spherical roving cameras capturing the action.

“Most of the time they’re hanging around like vultures,” Wright says, “and in some sequences there are three of them buzzing around. And in those cases, we had to constantly work out the choreography of where they were.”

The roving cameras provide live coverage for the audience watching the show on TV. But they also presented a visual effects challenge whenever a rover-eye view was simultaneously displayed on an in-world monitor. To maintain continuity, artists had to make sure that the angle seen in the rover’s video feed properly matched its constantly changing position.

“Steve Hardy deserves a medal,” notes Dave Zaretti, “for not only looking after the big exterior shots of the V-Wing, but also the hundreds of shots inside of it – keeping track of which rover cams should be seen where, not only in the main plates but also in the TV inserts.”

All of it adds up to a film jam-packed with tons of action and more than 1,700 visual effects shots.

“The effects work is huge, and subtle at the same time,” says Wright. “There’s a shot where Glen is in a New York hotel and gets into an elevator, and in the background is Times Square. But because the focus is on Glen the entire time, this amazing futuristic Times Square vista, with all of the screens, is completely out of focus. It’s a show where I feel there’s an enormous amount of work in the background, but out of focus. I think it’s really cool.”

A short sequence depicting Richards saving the life of a fellow oil-rig worker is only four shots, but is described by network executive Dan Killian (Josh Brolin) as “the most thrilling 10 seconds of video I’ve seen all year.” “We were very much beholden to deliver the most exciting 10 seconds of footage,” Whitehurst quips. “No half measures.”

The oil rig, crashing waves, lightning, and rain were fully digital elements. The actors were shot against a green screen. “We had two very dry actors dangling from a string,” adds Zaretti. “So we had to try and integrate them into the scene. But I think those shots worked really well.”

Work on The Running Man was hubbed out of ILM’s London studio, with further contributions from ILM artists based in Mumbai. Rodeo FX and Untold Studios completed additional shots. The key to a great end result, Wright believes, is all departments working together in sync.

“There’s incredible work by Andrew and ILM in the movie,” Wright says. “But it’s always in conjunction with something else – whether it’s the camera, an amazing location, what production design has done, what physical effects are doing. And the thing I’m really proud of in the movie is that all of this is people working together out of mutual respect.

“There are very few entirely green screen shots,” continues Wright. “And I think what people misunderstand about great visual effects is, they say, ‘It’s all CG.’ But of course, the best work is where it’s actually a collaboration.”

Whitehurst and Zaretti believe Wright’s style and approach to directing help bring the best ideas to life. “There was creative wiggle room,” Zaretti says. “And that’s nice, because you don’t always have that creative breathing space. So enjoy it and let the artists shine.”

“Absolutely,” concurs Whitehurst. “Edgar is definitely somebody who is very open to being shown something he was not expecting. It’s great seeing his enthusiasm when we show him stuff for the first time, and seeing him relax and go, ‘Oh, it’s going to be okay.’”

Wright says he’s most impressed by the world-building in the film, full of details that may only appear for a few seconds but make a lasting impression on the audience. “I wonder whether we set a dangerous precedent for ourselves by actually delivering in under a year,” the director laughs. “I’m really, really proud of the work, and I think some of the shots are just exceptionally beautiful and rich and detailed. What I also like about it is, it doesn’t feel like a lot of the effects are grandstanding.”

At the end of the day, Whitehurst says he is continually impressed by the ILM team’s innovative spirit that brought The Running Man over the finish line.

“ILM is a very refreshing place to work because there is so much experience, but it’s always in the service of making beautiful pictures that help tell the story,” he says. “I’m agnostic about what technology we use. I just want to use the right pencil for the job. But ILM has all of the pencils, and more importantly, the people who know how to use all of those pencils.”

Pre-order The Running Man Limited Edition Steelbook now.

—

Clayton Sandell is a Star Wars author and enthusiast, Celebration stage host, and a longtime fan of the creative people who keep Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound on the leading edge of visual effects and sound design. Follow him on Instagram (@claytonsandell), Bluesky (@claytonsandell.com), or X (@Clayton_Sandell).

One of the biggest days in American sports is equally renowned for its iconic commercial spots.

The artists from Industrial Light & Magic have contributed visual effects to two original commercials as part of the broadcast of Super Bowl LX, the celebrated championship game of America’s National Football League.

Lucasfilm’s newest feature film from the Star Wars galaxy, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is set to premiere on May 22, 2026, and the original spot directed by Jon Favreau, “A New Journey Begins,” provided audiences with a touching moment between the production’s namesakes. ILM’s contributions include bringing the icy world of Hoth, along with a group of tauntaun creatures, to the screen alongside the beloved characters.

For another spot, ILM returned to one of its most iconic visual effects achievements with Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993). For the new commercial directed by Taika Waititi in partnership with Xfinity, ILM created a Tyrannosaurus rex, Dilophosaurus, and a herd of Gallimimus, all inspired by the company’s work on the classic film.

Watch “A New Journey Begins”:

Watch “Jurassic Park…Works”:

—

Read more about the latest artistry and innovation from Industrial Light & Magic here on ILM.com.

The visual effects supervisor discusses ILM’s contributions to director Ryan Coogler’s supernatural sensation, which is nominated for “Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature” at the VES Awards.

By Jay Stobie

Helmed by writer/director Ryan Coogler, Warner Bros.’ Sinners (2025) defies the boundaries of traditional genres, telling the story of Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan) as they return home to establish their own juke joint. Forced to deal with the cruel inequalities of 1930s Mississippi and a ravenous vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell), the twin brothers’ exploits are paired with an exhilarating blues soundtrack and live performances. ILM visual effects supervisor Nick Marshall (The Last of Us [2023], Dune: Part Two [2024]) joined ILM.com to outline Industrial Light & Magic’s visual effects contributions to the film, which included a near-fatal encounter with a symbolic rattlesnake and a train’s entrance into a bustling station.

A Bewildering Briefing

“As the ILM visual effects supervisor on the film, I looked after a small body of work, by ILM’s standards, as we handled just under 100 shots covering two different sequences,” Marshall explains to ILM.com. ILM’s work on Sinners took place at ILM’s Vancouver studio, and Marshall recounts how the first story overview he received left him slightly perplexed.

“Early on, people were quite tight-lipped over what this movie was. We had an excellent collaboration with the filmmakers in terms of the technical understanding of the visual effects we were going to do, but the bigger picture was kept close to the chest. Sinners was outlined to us as a period movie with a gangster element to it, and racial segregation was also an important plot point. At the same time, it’s got a big supernatural element, and Michael B. Jordan is playing twins. And, as all of this is going on, the heart of the movie is about blues music.

“When we got this initial brief, we thought it was a bit bizarre but sounded very interesting,” Marshall continues. “There were so many elements to the story that it got to the point where I asked the client if it was going to be a comedy [laughs]. They said, ‘No, it’s actually a serious horror movie.’ As we progressed with our work, the plot unfolded, and we understood a lot more. Even though we didn’t necessarily know exactly what the movie was about until a long way into production, there was such a passion from everyone going into it. We could tell we were working on a pretty special project with a clear vision behind it.”

Rumble with a Rattlesnake

The first ILM sequence to appear in the film centered upon the twins discovering a rattlesnake concealed in their truck bed, leading Smoke to stab the snake with a knife and toss its bleeding body onto the ground. “Ryan described this moment as foreshadowing, as it echoes the moment when Smoke has a standoff with Cornbread [Omar Benson Miller] outside of the juke joint later in the movie. The snake scene is the first time you get a sense that there’s something off and maybe even supernatural about this world that they’re in, so we went deep into trying to give that meaning. The idea of familiars foreshadowing bad events repeats often in Sinners – there are ravens, crows, and vultures which appear throughout the film and establish that there’s a tension building.”

In terms of the snake itself, the ILM team had plenty of information to base their visual effects on, as Marshall notes, “Ryan Coogler is an avid snake collector and knows a lot about them, so we were going to have to do justice to the real thing. Ryan told us how snakes that are shedding their skin get more aggressive – they’re in a heightened state because they’re weakened by it – and that they get a layer of skin that creates a cloudy-eyed look, which ties in nicely to the tapetum lucidum effect that the vampires’ eyes have in Sinners. Production shot a real timber rattlesnake in the back of the truckbed for us as reference, and the one place where we deliberately made a creative change which differed from the real snake, was to give the eyes that shedding-skin appearance. [Animation lead] Agata Matuszak sat down for weeks looking through internet references to find every perfect snake attack shot that she could locate – snakes striking into the camera, at a mouse, or toward balloons and seeing how quickly they move. She became a brilliant source on snake locomotion.”

The scope of ILM’s contributions to the snake sequence changed over time as the edit continued to evolve, with Marshall declaring, “The reference served us well as far as providing a snake to visually match to, but we were originally only supposed to do a single shot of the snake. They were going to capture the snake being uncovered, waking up, and all of that practically, and we would take over when the snake had to be stabbed. However, they couldn’t get a performance out of the real snake on the day of – it was happily toodling around in the truck bed – so we took over and delivered around 10 shots of the snake. Not all of those shots made it into the movie, because they were still experimenting with ideas for what actions they wanted from the snake.”

The ‘Pool Noodle’ Process

ILM’s approach to the snake sequence needed to factor in the reality that Smoke would be interacting directly with the knife and the animal itself. Marshall relays, “For lighting purposes, we had to make sure that the knife was blocked accurately when Smoke brought it down over the top of the snake’s head. We did a basic digital double version of Smoke and reprojected some of the plate back onto that so – if you ever saw anything in a reflection – it had the correct texture of his hands and suit. We kept the knife as practical as we could but eventually took it over because the knife very visibly enters the snake’s head. We reconstructed the knife prop and used that for the reflections of our CG assets and blood interaction.”

Turning to the blood that pours from the rattlesnake, Marshall says, “Our effects team did amazing blood simulations for the blood spatter, and when you see all of the interaction with the knife. When the knife pins the snake’s head, you get blood leaking out from underneath and spreading across the truck bed, as well. Our effects team totally nailed it. The lone aspect we came in to touch up was the blood pumping out of its neck wound when it’s tossed into the long grass. You get a few shots of it writhing around as it’s dying. That ended up being a combination – the effects simulations for the blood spatter as it hits the ground, and we also did a practical blood element shoot at the last minute to sell the sense of the viscous blood pooling on the surface and trickling down the sides.”

This impromptu ILM shoot involved an unexpected tool, as Marshall shares, “We shot it in my backgarden, where it was a construction using a pool noodle that had been hacked apart to represent the snake. We rigged up blood packs to pump blood out of an artificial wound that we had cut into the pool noodle. Our comp team, under the supervision of Okan Ataman, made the best of it and pulled it together using the most successful elements from our effects simulation and our practical shoot. That combination got us over the line, and the client was extremely happy with it.”

Locomotive Magic

The second sequence ILM presided over focused on a train arriving at a Mississippi station. “We did a lot of photorealistic reconstructions of the Clarksdale train station,” Marshall begins. “When we started discussing it, production was going to have a real locomotive come into the station. We were just going to do environment extensions. As it turned out, they struggled to make it work with the timing and location, so we took over the train component too. That became a big deal for us, because we had assumed the practical train would block a lot of our environment throughout the sequence.

“The train wound up being full CG itself, and we were shooting directly into the green screen – which is daunting with visual effects because it can telegraph itself,” Marshall divulges. “Fortunately, production assisted us by building the green screen to the exact height of the train so we’d get correct shadows. Since the train was green as well – which is true to the period – a small amount of green spill contaminating the environment wasn’t necessarily the worst thing. Normally, that would be bad for us, but here it served as a fantastic reference for where the top of the train should sit. It gave us the correct shadow and lighting for what came over the top of the train once we put the train in to replace the green screen. This allowed us to have wonderful light interaction with the characters.”

Real-world references are essential to visual effects work, particularly when dealing with such a distinct time period. “We had tremendous art department concepts that production designer Hannah Beachler put together in collaboration with our production visual effects supervisor, Michael Ralla. Those served as the basis for the broader design of the streets, the kind of signage we would get, and other specifics like that. We supplemented them with our own research for period details about the streetlighting and electronics you’d expect around the trains. At that point, they were going through the transition from steam locomotives to electricity. [Environment supervisor] Anton Borisov pored over old photographs to see what Clarksdale really looked like in the 1930s. We went into an extensive research period to figure out the mechanisms that were active on the rail at that point and how the carriages looked, right down to the numbers you see on the side,” Marshall reveals.

The film’s setting had an impact on ILM’s responsibilities, as Marshall elaborates, “In collaboration with the client, we ensured there was a sense of racial segregation to the environment, so you could see a clear delineation between the side of the tracks reserved for whites and the side that was designated for Black people. It was a key plot point for the movie, and we wanted to do justice to it. Beyond that, our goal was to make everything look as photoreal as possible. The client wanted our work to blend seamlessly so no one would notice that they occasionally relied heavily on visual effects. In certain cases, the visual effects took over the majority of the frame, but it always had to disappear and be completely invisible.”

Buildings, Automobiles, and Bystanders

Although production built a full-scale physical train station to be used on the set, ILM nevertheless offered support in post-production. “We did a bit of repair work on the train station itself, which they did shoot practically. Production put significant time and effort into the building with the understanding we’d handle the majority of the environment extensions. There were a few places where tiles were missing and shingles fell off, and we did the train tracks that the train rolls in on,” Marshall adds.

Research and reference entered play once again when it came time to outfit the environment with traffic and pedestrians. “As far as the cars you see, we sought to add life to the background,” Marshall remarks. “We didn’t want the set extension to feel static, so we researched Ford automobiles from around that time. Cars were fairly limited in their color palette in that era, as you’d tend to mostly have black paint, so we didn’t have to do too much variance in colors for the automobiles.

“Our CG supervisor, Anthony Zwartouw, gathered reference photography and basic assets, then we pieced together the design of the vehicles,” Marshall continues. “Then, we went about building them, and our animation team did a phenomenal job of making the cars seem as if they were trundling over uneven ground. Our compositing team led by Michael Ranalletta, was outstanding too – they went in and fleshed out the background with 2D sprites of people. Production shot a ton of 2D elements of people milling around, holding luggage, talking, and walking about. We used those to populate the backgrounds and achieve the busy, lived-in environment that they wanted.”

“Invisible” Involvement

Marshall indicates that Sinners was shot on large format film, and the shots which ILM worked on were shot on System 65, “a super-wide format that’s been used on movies like The Hateful Eight [2015]. Since film is shot infrequently these days, we had to rebuild and relearn certain parts of the pipeline to be able to cope with that. What might’ve been simple requests in a digital workflow, such as additional takes of a particular shot or extending a frame range, became quite complex and expensive. They had to order those frames to be re-scanned, and there aren’t many people who do it anymore. Certain points were tricky, as it can be difficult to naturally ingest physical film into our digital pipelines. [Color scientist] Matthias Scharfenberg did remarkable work to give us a color process that allowed us to progress with the movie.”

“Along with that, there’s a physical quality to the way Sinners was shot that we needed to emulate too. [Director of photography] Autumn Durald Arkapaw shoots on deliberately de-tuned lenses, and she’ll send them off to have little abnormalities and subtle effects appear in the lenses because she wanted them to have character. Where a lens might customarily be uniform across its surface, hers had slight shape changes. Our compositing team with [comp supervisor] Okan Ataman and [comp lead] Michael Ranalletta did some significant lens profiling work, because things would warp in strange ways and go in and out of focus in places you wouldn’t expect.”

“[Digital artist] Florian Sanchez literally sat for over a month just profiling our lenses to see if we could set the tooling internally, which took a perfect CG render and added those subtle changes. When we’d get our perfect CG renders to come out, we then applied all these effects that were – in many cases – degrading the actual image. However, that made it feel exactly like it was this real film format that could’ve been used to shoot this movie 40 years ago. We’d add tons of grain and noise over the top, plus small dust hits here and there. We wanted our work to not look digital in what was otherwise a sort of analog movie, so we had to reapply those details to our CG.”

Other less-obvious contributions which ILM made to their assigned sequences tied in to the director of photography’s preferred approach to lighting shots, as Marshall conveys, “Autumn shoots with a lot of negative fill – she’ll put up huge black flags and canopies just out of camera to block light and create shaping on the characters’ faces. It’s a more natural way of working, but it meant that the 360-degree high-dynamic range images we’d usually use to light our scenes had massive black canopies in them. When they filmed at the station, they didn’t have a representation of the train when they shot it for real, so when we put the train in, we started getting reflections of those canopies. [CG supervisor] Anthony Zwartouw made sure the lighting across the sequence was solid. Anthony helped us come up with a good system for lighting these shots in a way that let us do a big pass at taking that stuff out digitally and projecting the results onto a low resolution LiDAR scan of the location, so we had a clean digital set which we could use to light our assets.”

Motion Picture Partners

Marshall’s effusive praise for his ILM team extends to the client-side filmmakers, as the visual effects supervisor beams, “My direct contacts on Sinners were Michael Ralla and visual effects producer James Alexander. Not far into our work, I understood that they had a super collaborative team who valued our input. Michael made regular efforts to stop us from referring to ourselves as a vendor. Michael said, ‘You aren’t a vendor, you’re a partner in this process, so let’s scrap that word from the playbook right now.’ To their credit, they walked the walk. When they were out on set, they’d call us to consult on critical decisions. ‘We’ve hit this problem, so do you want us to put a green screen here or there?’ They wouldn’t be able to do both because of budget or time constraints, but they’d involve us in those conversations.”

These discussions benefited ILM’s workflow immensely, as Marshall asserts, “We weren’t waiting to receive plates and unaware of what we’d be getting to work with. We were incorporated into the decision-making and could plan what we had to do.” Marshall attributes the collaborative spirit that permeated the production’s departments to the director, observing, “Ryan’s a collaborative filmmaker, and he’s always present – he’s engaged and drives the film. There was so much respect between the departments, and we each tried to resolve issues you may not even think about.”

Marshall credits the members of his ILM production team for keeping them on schedule and adapting to editorial needs. “Ryan was making adjustments to the timing of the cut as it’s the first time Smoke and Stack separate from each other in the movie, so we built our process to be flexible and allow Ryan the freedom in the edit room.. Our producer Alan Cummins, [project manager] Kaisha Williams, and the production team worked tirelessly to guarantee that we were left with enough time to fit in everything that we needed to do, which enabled the filmmakers to continue making those last-minute changes.”

Valuing Visual Effects

Marshall emphasizes Ryan Coogler’s appreciation for visual effects, professing, “In recent years, you’ve seen a continued trend toward pretending there’s no visual effects involvement in films. Ryan bucks that trend. Ryan shot as much as he could for real on Sinners, but he’s a huge proponent for visual effects being a part of the process. For Ryan, visual effects are absolutely indispensable to the team. It’s nice when a director goes out of their way to give credit to the visual effects companies as another department that brings their vision to life. We never felt as if our contributions were being downplayed.”

Speaking to the role of visual effects in filmmaking as a whole, Marshall says, “All visual effects artists and supervisors want to do is deliver the best work and help people tell interesting stories. Keeping visual effects as part of the conversation is something to be championed, and Sinners definitely did it right. The more that those conversations happen out in the open, the better. When we wrapped our last shot, Ryan sent us a video to thank the team and recognize us for our work. Sinners was a special show to be on in that way.”

The thoughtfulness displayed by Coogler and the entire Sinners crew made the experience of working on the project an exceptional one for Marshall, who concludes by offering his perspective on the completed film, affirming, “Ultimately, there’s so much symbolism in Sinners that I hope people can keep digging back into it and watch the movie again and again. There are so many intriguing parallels and nods to later scenes scattered throughout, and a great deal of history and culture that are crucial to the movie. So much thought went into every frame, and every shot has a purpose and a meaning. Because of that, and because ILM was brought into the loop to aid in making it that way, I hope Sinners will be one of those movies that stands the test of time. In 10 to 20 years, people can rewatch it and say, ‘I’ve never caught that moment even though I’ve already seen it five times. That’s a really nice detail!’”

Watch an ILM exclusive deleted scene from Sinners:

–

Jay Stobie (he/him) is a writer, author, and consultant who has contributed articles to ILM.com, Skysound.com, Star Wars Insider, StarWars.com, Star Trek Explorer, Star Trek Magazine, and StarTrek.com. Jay loves sci-fi, fantasy, and film, and you can learn more about him by visiting JayStobie.com or finding him on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms at @StobiesGalaxy.

ILM artists share their insights about this distinct installation now on view at Somerset House in London.

By Jamie Benning

The first thing visitors encounter inside Wayne McGregor: Infinite Bodies at London’s Somerset House is darkness. A vast LED screen fills the room, its shifting light reflected across the faces of those watching. The space is quiet at first, then sound begins to breathe into the room. Two figures slowly emerge. Their bodies twist, merge, and reform, suspended in a deep digital expanse that feels both intimate and endless. It is OMNI, a collaboration between choreographer Wayne McGregor and Industrial Light & Magic, and it sets the emotional, thematic, and sensory tone for everything that follows.

As an entry point, OMNI does not explain itself in conventional terms. It does not offer narrative, character, or spectacle in a familiar cinematic sense. Instead, it presents presence. Motion without edges. Energy without beginning or end. Viewers gather instinctively. Some stand for seconds. Others for many minutes. The work opens and closes in cycles, dissolving into darkness before returning again, as if inhaling and exhaling. It is an installation that encourages stillness before it encourages movement.

Reuniting McGregor with the creative teams and technologists at ILM for the first time since their work together on ABBA Voyage in 2022, OMNI invites viewers into what McGregor calls “a choreographic exploration of the infinite potential of human connection.” Using ILM’s performance capture and simulation technologies, dancers Rebecca Bassett-Graham and Salvatore De Simone perform an unending duet of energies. Their movement is captured, transformed, and re-presented inside a boundless digital plane, a place where the distinction between human and virtual becomes beautifully uncertain.

You do not see the performers themselves, but ghost-like representations and shadows of their digital footprint. Luminous networks of the skeletal and nervous systems glow and decay in cycles of light. Around them, murmuration-like particles drift and swirl, sometimes responding to the dancers’ movements, and at other moments seeming to lead them, creating a shifting dialogue between motion and environment. Form appears, dissolves, reforms. It is at once biological and architectural, organic and synthetic.

The installation was created with ILM visual effects artists Matt Rank, Xavier Martin Ramirez, Edward Randolph, Arnaud Mavoka-Tama, Mike Long, Julien Ducoin, Oscar Dahlén, Alessandro Pieri, and Bimpe Alliu, with generous support from ROE Visual and Studio Wayne McGregor. Positioned deliberately as the first work visitors encounter, the piece anchors the exhibition and mirrors Somerset House’s broader mission to explore the intersection of art, technology, and society.

Conceptualizing Motion

Concept artist Bimpe Alliu was brought onto the project at a very early stage to help shape those initial visual directions. “I was going through the ideas with Matt [visual effects supervisor Matt Rank], and learning more about what the project was going to entail,” she said. “I was playing around with storyboarding a lot of potential movement ideas.”

Rather than beginning with dancers as recognizable figures, the creative team quickly gravitated toward abstraction. For Alliu, the use of murmurations became central to expressing motion without relying on literal anatomy. “It is a beautiful way of capturing movement while still existing as a solid form. There is all this motion and synergy happening at the same time,” she explained. “It also allows for a lot of natural push and pull, which is really exciting when you are thinking about animation.”

Her design process embraced freedom over prescription. “It is fun because it is nice to do something that is a little more abstract. It gets the brain thinking in different ways and allows you to deconstruct form and how to portray it,” she said. “You can tap into other references and use them in different ways. You might think, ‘I can approach this in a completely different way from how I usually would.’ You have a wider park to play within. There is no wrong idea. They are just ideas, and either they land, or they do not.”

Although OMNI was always destined for a monumental screen, Alliu said it was vital not to let format dictate imagination. “You start big, knowing it is going to be on a screen, but you do not let that stop you,” she said. “There was never a point where it felt like, because it is on the screen, you cannot do this or that. It was very much ‘blue sky’ thinking.”

Somerset House and the Culture of Collaboration

Introducing the exhibition, Somerset House director Jonathan Reekie described Infinite Bodies as a perfect embodiment of the institution’s ethos. “Wayne McGregor and Infinite Bodies, in so many ways, encapsulates what Somerset House is all about. Most visibly, Somerset House has been about reimagining the historic building for the future. We developed a cultural program that sits between different art forms, the intersection of culture, technology, and society at large. We are conscious that we are in an ever-changing creative landscape, and therefore, artists are changing and working in different ways all the time. We need to create a space for that.”

Reekie also pointed to the importance of community in shaping new ideas. Somerset House is home to a creative community of nearly 3,000 artists, makers, and entrepreneurs, and collaboration sits at the core of its identity. “We don’t believe great ideas always come from an individual working on their own in a room. They come from community, from groups of people coming together and making great things,” he said. “That’s the way Wayne works.”

For McGregor, this collaborative model has defined his career. His studio, based in East London’s Olympic Park, has long operated as a laboratory for experimentation with scientists, technologists, and other artists. Infinite Bodies brings together more than three decades of his interdisciplinary works and investigations into the subtleties of movement, both human and non-human. Each work within the exhibition operates as an experiment, a proposition about the body’s potential and how technology might allow us to perceive it differently.

Dr. Cliff Lauson, director of exhibitions at Somerset House and co-curator of Infinite Bodies, recalled that McGregor’s polymathic approach was one of the defining reasons he wanted to collaborate. “It was several years ago, and that impulse that I felt about Wayne’s work, and what might make for an interesting exhibition at Somerset House, now has been so gratifying to see after so many years,” he said. “Interesting ideas come out during conversation and collaboration. It doesn’t help anybody to be working in silos.”

Physical Intelligence

When Wayne McGregor took the microphone at the exhibition launch, he spoke with warmth and generosity about the complex process of translating live choreographic practice into a gallery environment. “I want to say thank you to Somerset House and to Cliff and Jonathan and to all my team at Studio Wayne McGregor because it’s been a huge challenge,” he said. “I’m used to making. I’ve made something like 200 pieces at this stage. That’s been a huge passion for my kind of choreographic practice. But I’ve always had a parallel practice, and that parallel practice has been in research and testing ideas around the notion of physical thinking.”

At the heart of Infinite Bodies is McGregor’s long-standing interest in what he describes as physical intelligence. The exhibition invites visitors to reconsider their own physical awareness and their relationship to technology. “Technology is not outside of ourselves,” McGregor said. “The body is the most technologically advanced thing we’re looking at. I’ve not seen any form of technology that surpasses the living body, its ability to create, to respond, to be spontaneous, to feel.”

This tension between embodiment and computation, between instinct and algorithm, runs through OMNI in particular. It reframes dance through light and motion while still preserving the physical presence and emotional weight of performance.

From Film to Immersive Space

For ILM, OMNI provided a rare opportunity to apply cinematic tools to an environment that does not behave like cinema. “I’ve spent my career digitising the real world, real people, real environments, and turning that into assets that we can use in CG,” said Matt Rank, ILM’s visual effects supervisor on the project. “My role has taken me full circle. Now we’re taking computer graphic content and displaying it back in the real world.”

Rank’s work sits at the intersection between traditional visual effects, virtual production, and emerging immersive media. “What we found from ABBA Voyage and with Infinite Bodies is that shared experience, people coming together is what matters,” he said. “That’s where we’re pushing our content and technology, a shared, meditative experience that people can have together.”

Working with McGregor offered a fundamentally different creative starting point. “We’re used to working with studios and directors who have very specific briefs on where they want the creative to be led. Working with Wayne was a blank canvas. We spent a lot of time understanding what this piece should be, and maybe more time understanding what it shouldn’t be,” Rank said. “He didn’t necessarily want to see the form or the shape of his performers, but how their movement reflected through the body. That became the first aesthetic for the piece. From his feedback, we then started work with our own art department, bringing these ideas and concepts to life to present back to Wayne in more unique visual forms that would set the tone of the final piece.”

Rank described OMNI as “… an abstract piece, but it is quality, it feels photographic. Even though there’s real-world elements about it, it kind of sits within your psyche. It doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable either.” He also pointed to natural phenomena as key influences. “There is a nod to how birds flock and dance in the sky, and how plankton can emit light when it is disturbed by movement, and these carried through into the final piece, represented by the murmurations seen across the two looks.”

ILM Beyond the Frame

Reflecting on ILM’s wider creative mission, Rank said, “We’re all storytellers. We love collaborating with directors, but doing that in new forms and new mediums is incredibly exciting. Our world is becoming ever more interconnected, and we’re keen to explore what we can do in those spaces. With a smaller team, you can be really agile and get to results faster.”

For Alliu, projects like OMNI underline the breadth of what ILM represents today. “It showcases to people that want to work with companies like ILM that there are so many different kinds of projects we create,” she said. “People do not just think of ILM as one kind of thing anymore. They start to see that there is a much broader range of work.”

Seeing the completed exhibition in sequence gave Alliu a new perspective on how OMNI functions within the wider narrative of Infinite Bodies. “Coming straight out of seeing the work that we did and then going into everything else, it suddenly felt like being grounded back in the physical space again,” she said. “It was really nice seeing all the different interpretations of movement and communication, the role digital plays in that, and the fact that it still very much needs the physical. It still very much needs the body, the person, and the movement.”

She also sees that visibility as vital to the industry’s future. “It gives people the understanding and the option to think, ‘This is something I could do,’ and they start to think about careers in this space,” she said. “We still need that human input. You still need that eye, that instinct, and that creativity behind it all.

“Art and science have always co-existed on many levels, and technology is also a part of that, especially as a lens by which we’re able to understand, explore and conceptualise both,” Alliu added. 

As Reekie observed, Somerset House’s role is to provide artists with the space to imagine new futures. “It’s up to the artists to tell us what the future might look like because they’re the best people to help us navigate it,” he said.

Infinite Bodies offers one such vision. A space where choreography, light, and digital craft meet. A reminder that innovation is not just about machines, but about the bodies, instincts, and creative impulses that continue to drive them. ILM continues to explore how those instincts and tools translate beyond film and into shared physical spaces.

—

Jamie Benning is a filmmaker, author, and podcaster with a lifelong passion for sci-fi and fantasy cinema. He hosts The Filmumentaries Podcast, featuring twice-monthly interviews with behind-the-scenes artists. Visit Filmumentaries.com or find him on X (@jamieswb) and @filmumentaries on Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Frankenstein and The Lost Bus are recognized while ILM also contributes to two other nominated films.

The BAFTA Film Awards announced their 2026 nominees today, and artists from Industrial Light & Magic have earned two nominations in Outstanding Visual Effects for their work on Frankenstein and The Lost Bus.

ILM visual effects supervisor Ivan Busquets joins fellow visual effects supervisors Dennis Berardi and Ayo Burgess and model effects supervisor José Granell for director Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.

And for The Lost Bus from director Paul Greengrass, ILM visual effects supervisor David Zaretti joins production visual effects supervisor Charlie Noble and special effects coordinator Brandon K. McLaughlin.

Additionally, ILM contributed to other Outstanding Visual Effects nominees Avatar: Fire and Ash and F1.

Congratulations to our ILM nominees! The 2026 BAFTA Film Awards will be held on February 22 in London. Read the full list of nominations here.

—

Read more about The Lost Bus here on ILM.com:

Rendering a Rescue: ILM’s Dave Zaretti on the Visual Effects of ‘The Lost Bus’